Uneven Trading of Lives
by Queen of the Castle
Summary: Rose Tyler is the Bad Wolf, and the Bad Wolf is Rose Tyler. There's no letting go of a connection that deep. Nine/Rose


Warning: Contains character death.

Author's Notes: AU of 'Parting of the Ways'. Fair warning, this one's a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

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><p>This is how two worlds end even as one is being saved.<p>

A girl stands bravely dying, and a man hovers just a few short feet in front of her wishing now that he himself hadn't chosen the path of cowardice so often that's he's practically lost track. All those little mistakes and things left undone the many times he's run away have slowly drawn together to culminate in a shatterpoint. He might have been able to predict something of that nature if he'd ever truly put thought to it, but he'd still never have been able to countenance the possibility that it could all lead to _this_.

It wouldn't matter even if he had been able to foresee this exactly, though. He couldn't take any of it back even then. Somehow he has the feeling it's been too late to avoid this since the very moment he met Rose Tyler, or perhaps even before that. Fate can be a fickle thing, and it's rarely treated him with anything but disdain.

The Doctor is glad he hadn't already known the true meaning of the words 'Bad Wolf' even back then, as they made their first appearances when Rose was just starting to carve herself a place in his life. They haunt him enough right now, in this moment alone, without him having had to harbour a long and impotent awareness of how they've tauntingly been leading up to this like the countdown on a bomb. Those two cryptic syllables were only ever scattered to lead her to the thing that would bring her back here, and he is the reason she was stranded elsewhere in the first place.

In trying so valiantly to save her life, even to the point of giving her up despite that being the last thing he really wants, he has made this happen.

It's the kind of contradiction the Time Lords, with their great need for imposing order and control, had always despised. It turns out the Doctor has something in common with the rest of them after all.

He must force his will on the universe, just this once. He simply can't be responsible for this. Rose can't die. Not for him, or for anything at all. He has to find a way.

He can't change his past actions, but he thinks he still has one chance to turn things around; to potentially save her, and himself in the process. It's ironic that it will take yet another act of spinelessness on his part, for he knows as he steps into her personal space and slowly closes the distance between their lips that this sacrifice that's he's making, unlike hers, has nothing to do with courage. Quite the opposite. He's running at full speed in the opposite direction from the mere idea that he might have to live through her death today. He fears that so much that he can't _stand_ it.

He'll press his lips to Rose's and draw the foreign essence out of her, simultaneously infusing her with his own life energy to heal the damage that has already been done to her ravaged body. He'll surely be forced to regenerate without retaining that energy to protect and heal his own body from the power he's inviting into himself, of course, but he doesn't care given the alternative. He's just happy to be able to save her.

At least, that's the _plan_.

It's well thought-out, and it makes sense both logically and karmically. It's his life in return for hers – a straight swap – even though he doesn't think it's necessarily an even trade because she's ultimately worth so much more than him. He can even see the play of it acted out across his mind in such perfect detail that he thinks for a moment it already _has_ all occurred exactly as he wants.

But this is a man whose plans never turn out like he intends, and this one time when he _needs_ it to work far more than he's ever needed comparatively trivial things like oxygen is plainly no exception. He's never been that lucky. Of course he wouldn't start now.

So in reality, all that happens when he kisses her is that they gasp into each other's mouths and their tongues dance for a moment, then it ends on a sharp sob as Rose's pain escalates.

The chaos of the entire universe seems to converge into that one moment of pure confusion and frustration. It should have worked. Why hasn't it _worked_? He holds onto her and tilts her chin up, staring inquiringly into her glowing eyes as if he might find there the solution to why he has failed this time, of all times, when failure just isn't an option. Surprisingly, he actually does receive his answer.

He wishes he hadn't. Oh, how he wishes. It's anything but the answer he wants.

"Let go," he orders her, though he's not talking directly to Rose at all. She clearly wants to be rid of the power burning its way through her badly enough that she needs no convincing. The problem is that the power simply doesn't want to be rid of _her_ now that it has tangible form, and she can't force it out against its will. She's not strong enough. Neither is he. "Let go," he repeats even more firmly, "let go, let go, let her go, _let go_!" He shakes Rose as if he can somehow jolt her free of her own failing body, only stopping when his treatment increases her whimpers of pain. He's well aware that he's diving swiftly into a pool of hysteria, and it doesn't matter to him in the slightest, because _why not_. Nothing good awaits him in the land of the sane.

He falls into silence suddenly, shocking even himself in his abruptness. He listens to her breathing, and is absurdly glad he can still hear it... that it's still there to be heard.

"Why is it so hot?" Rose shatters the quiet with barely a whisper. Her voice sounds far more like pure Rose Tyler than it has since she first set foot out of the TARDIS amidst that blinding golden light. He hates that that's clearly only an illusion, given that she's a little less herself every single second that passes.

"Please, make it stop," she begs, and that's how he knows for absolute certain that he's right. Rose, after all, does not _beg_. "It's burning. It hurts so much."

He steps back away from her – staggers, really, as if the shifting of the world under his feet is physical rather than pure metaphor – and he says, "I'm sorry. Oh Rose."

She gasps and tears run down her face. He reaches out and catches them against the skin of his fingertips, stubbornly holding onto them the way that he can't cling to _her_.

"I can't... everything's so bright. Please..."

"It'll stop soon," he tries to reassure her, but it feels like the words catch in his throat, and he can't hear over the rushing in his ears whether they actually find voice. He doesn't know if she'd truly hear them either even if the words are audible.

"Why?" she asks weakly. She could have been asking any number of questions, and he doesn't know how to answer her. He doesn't _have_ all the answers, or even _any_ of the ones that matter. This is possibly the first time in his nine hundred years of existence that he's mourned the fact that he doesn't know and hasn't experienced _everything_.

The thing inside her – that powerful and far too deeply anchored secondary presence that he can sense looking out from behind her eyes where there should be nothing but Rose – seems to swell inside her like an almost physical presence. Her eyes grow brighter and brighter with it until the Doctor has to look away to preserve his own sight.

He doesn't know why he bothers. He'd rather be blind than see what he knows is coming.

She screams – a reverberating and somehow almost mechanical noise so powerful that he wonders that it doesn't shred her fragile human vocal chords – and that sound breaks the Doctor's hearts more effectively than it would have done to witness the deaths of the billions of humans on the Earth below if he'd set off the Delta Wave after all.

Those people stand tall below, celebrating the victory of having survived near genocide. They have no idea that their saviour is at that moment falling heavily to the ground, with the Doctor following her just half a second later. He reaches for her, hoping beyond all logic that it's not too late to catch her... to just hold onto her for a second more, and a second after that, in a sequence of moments that he could stretch out into eternity...

His hand closes over her shoulder, and he rolls her around onto her back. He doesn't need to slide his fingers slightly around and upwards to feel for a pulse. It's simply unnecessary.

The complete slackness of her face makes him want to immediately turn her face back away from him so he doesn't have to see the clear signs that he's failed her.

He'd known, when he decided to send her back to Earth and to Mickey and her mother, that he was going to lose her. He'd made that choice willingly, knowing the alternatives. But he didn't accept this. Never _this_.

The awareness of being completely alone – literally, being the last one left alive in this place, as well as in a far more personally meaningful sense – strikes him almost violently. He feels more completely empty than Satellite Five now is. He's too numb to even shed tears, even though that's the very least Rose Tyler deserves from him.

No, that isn't true. The very least she'd deserved was for him to never get involved in her life past initially saving it. She could be at home right now, safe and happy and never once considering flying two hundred thousand years into her future just to sacrifice herself for someone like him. That's the way it _should_ be.

He wouldn't be feeling this, then. He'd simply have died here at the hands of the Daleks, thus finally bringing his race to the complete extinction that the Time War should rightly have secured years ago.

Better him than her, any day.

He almost doesn't want to touch her now, but he can't help but move to gently thread his fingers between hers one last time. However, there is a sickening jerk at his time senses before he can even make contact, and he falls backwards away from her, disbelieving.

Her eyes fly open and look right at him.

"Rose!" he exclaims, his shock quickly giving way to wonder. "You're alive!"

How, he nearly asks, but he realises explanations are inconsequential compared to the outcome.

"I exist," she corrects mildly, and his spike in happiness is swiftly crushed under the weight of those two words.

He's sure he's going to be so sick that he'll turn himself inside out with pure revulsion, for he knows exactly what she means when she says that. Those words combined with that slightly stilted voice that bears little resemblance to the girl who'd teased him mercilessly about dancing only a few weeks ago tells him everything he needs to know, and a lot that he'd rather not, if it's all the same.

The simple truth is that this girl the Doctor now badly wants to run away from, never looking back, isn't Rose Tyler at all. It's not even Rose Tyler influenced by having the power of the Time Vortex running through her veins. No, whatever has been left behind is so much less. It's an abomination, and he'd revolt against its use of Rose's body by shredding and pulverising it down until it was indistinguishable from the other dust coating the floor, but he's well aware that it's far more powerful than him and could easily squash him if he tried.

That sort of makes him _want_ to try all the same.

"It's time to leave," the thing riding Rose's body announces emotionlessly. It clearly spares no thought for waiting for Jack Harkness, who is just one room over and bound to awaken as a very different man at any moment because Rose – not this thing, but the real _Rose_ – had cared for him a little too much to let him go. It barely even seems to notice the Doctor, for that matter, except that he's standing right there between it and the TARDIS doors, and it doesn't seem to bother it if he hitches a ride out of here as well.

He hears the permission to flee – as if he's ever needed even that much to run away from things only half this horrific – and he wishes more than anything that he could jump into his ship and escape, leaving it behind here the way he usually does with his bad memories. But he can't, because in a way this presence _is_ the TARDIS, and the metal body of the ship is going nowhere unless the consciousness decides to oblige him. It's just another useless shell.

He can't imagine going with her – keeping her by his side like a ball and chain – but neither can he remain here while she leaves without him. All he's left here with now are husks; the human bodies litter the halls outside, the dust of the Daleks blows across the floor to gather around his boots, and the body that was once Rose Tyler stands so motionless that he isn't even certain she still breathes.

He's been surrounded by death ever since the Time War, but not since immediately after he'd killed the rest of his kind has its presence ever felt so oppressive.

It steps towards the TARDIS finally, and he follows almost thoughtlessly as if the air between them is magnetised. Each step makes him shudder, but he doesn't stop until he's back in the TARDIS with it.

This torture, he thinks, is exactly what he deserves for being the cause of it all.

Rose Tyler's life ends that day, and so does the Doctor's. Their bodies are both just too stupid to stay fallen.

~FIN~


End file.
